27 March 2014

Any psychiatrists out there?
I would love to hear theories on this tree owner's thought process.
The photos are attached to:Anna JungmayrBirth 1608 in GermanyDeath 1670 in Germany
The flag, titled german flag, was originally uploaded by another tree owner. All the others were uploaded by this tree owner and are untitled. Seven of his photos are attached to five other trees. Here are just some of the photos attached to Anna's profile:

If you have a photo or profile to suggest please send a link to buwtree(at)gmail(dot)com.

ONLY RECORD ATTACHED
U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s
William Moore, born abt 1763, arrival year: 1765

Let me get this straight. William was born to parents who, if they had lived, would have been 89 and 61 years old. He married a woman, twice, who was 26 years his senior. One of the marriages occurred before he was born, the other when he was five. That makes sense since he also fathered a child before his own birth. Of course that was his second birth since he immigrated 2 years after his first birth.
Like most examples on this blog I could have my pick of profiles from this tree. Son Aaron has a child born in 1782 and wife Ann is a bigamist with two children sired by another man in 1775. She married him in 1781, a year after her second marriage to William.
How does this ridiculousness escape the notice of the tree owner?

21 March 2014

Today's post has been interrupted to bring you the following rant. The photos from Monday's tree will be featured in a future post.
You'll probably be surprised to hear that this post will not be about Ancestry finally doing away with the "old" search. Dragging out the search change for five years was dumb but this move is, in my opinion, much worse.
Most, if not all, of you will recognize this as the bottom of the advanced search box:

The "Collection Priority" only works if you click the "Show only" box because why make something a one-step process when you can make it two, especially when the first step accomplishes absolutely nothing. That's a whole other rant, sorry. Back to the image.
Below the drop-down you can choose which collections you want included in your search results: Historical records, Stories & publications, Family trees, and Photos & maps. It should come as no surprise to regular readers of my blog that I never check the Family trees or Photos & maps boxes.
A SIDE NOTE: Both the drop-down and the check boxes are "sticky" meaning that they won't change until you change them. If you go on vacation and forget that you were working only with collections involving Australian maps just before you left you might be very confused by your search results when you come back to look for records of your Native American ancestors.

The options for the unchecked boxes are still there, a click away, but those results are not included in the main search results. Until now. Family trees are still filtered out, thank goodness. The issue is with the photo portion of Photos & maps. Here is an example:

For this search I had Historical records and Stories & publications checked. Unfortunately the first four results are photos. There is a portrait, a headstone, a document and something on a private tree. This has to be a glitch right? If I say something it will be fixed and I can go back to seeing the results I want to see, right? I posted that last image on Ancestry.com's Facebook page and an employee responded:

"OK, I checked on this and as I mentioned it's coming up in results because it's a database and because it includes scanned documents that are historical records, it is categorized as such. Since there is no way to separate out the different kinds of media in the collection with search, that is why you're seeing images. Hope that clarifies it for you. Have a good day!"

Seriously?!!? Apparently Ancestry's decision makers are not familiar with the loads of crap posted on clickophile trees. Making it worse is the fact that photos already on our tree and those that are ignored hints do not get filtered out. In the search example above two of the four images are already attached and a third was ignored as a hint.
I searched from another profile with the same two boxes checked and 10 of the first 15 results, six family photos and four documents, were items I uploaded. The other 5 were for photos on a private tree.
It looks like removing the "Show only" check removes photos from the first page of search results but depending on the profile it could cause other issues. Basically Ancestry's programmers are making the first page of search results useless. Do they use their company's product?
Photos on Ancestry can be categorized. It's very useful. For what, I have no idea. The category options are Portrait/Family Photo, Site/Building/Place, Headstone, Document/Certificate, and Other. You can't sort the photos by category in the profile's gallery or in the tree's gallery. You can't search for images by category. But since there are some documents uploaded as photos Ancestry is adding all photos to the historical records search. Now we have no way to stay away from the Disney Princess, Care Bearinsanity while we're searching for records. What a terrific idea. (sigh)

17 March 2014

Sometimes I'll be just about done typing in details and click over to a parent's or spouse's profile only to realize that it is the one I should be writing about. Today was one of those days. I deleted the profile of a man whose wife had 43 children, at least 3 of them born after she died, and decided to type up his mother's profile instead. How long will it take you to figure out why?

A man who died at the age of 7 did not father one child, much less 16. And a man who died at the age of 20 did not father 22 children. Maybe after medical advances in late 20th century but certainly not in the 18th.

Thanks to Kristin for the link to this tree ;-)If you have a tree to suggest please send a link to buwtree(at)gmail(dot)com. Thanks!

14 March 2014

I took a closer look at a few of the trees that has this image attached.

Title of photo: line leads to CharlemeagneUploaded to: Henry Cooke (1690-1772)Attached to: Over 100 other trees

One tree has Charlemagne and Henry Cooke but they are not connected. At least two others do not have Charlemagne, or Charlemeagne, in them at all.
The tree it was originally uploaded to has at least four profiles for the emperor including one that shows he died in 1914.
*head/desk*

Thanks again to Kristin for the link ;-)If you have a photo or profile to suggest please email the link to buwtree(at)gmail(dot)com.

The United States acquired Kansas in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. That would make George Larrison quite the pioneer. And since his daughter wasn't born until 1822 it also makes him a zombie. Being sired by a zombie must give her powers to defy the space-time continuum. She can be born in both Texas and Ireland and continue to live on past her death as her husband. Luckily it was only his marriage records that were added to her profile and not his wives.
The last record above has an alternate name submitted and a comment. They are so very helpful.

Alternate name suggestion:
"Margaret Whitaker rather than William Cox
Her date of birth is wrong. It showes [sic] she got married before she was born. Showes [sic] she got married in 1869 and she was born 1874. That just can not be right, please check this out. Thank You, [name]"Comment:
"I believe the spouse year is wrong! She was married before she was born."

Of course it couldn't possibly be a typo and they couldn't be bothered check the reliability of the source.

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Blog Reviews

Barking has been "deemed offensive to [Ancestry.com's] brand" and is banned from their Facebook pages. In Ancestry's "Community" comments with links to Barking are censored.Dear Emma, Hannah, Jemima, Mary Jane, and all of her other personalities agree that I use "the banner of 'education' to actually mock, deride and laugh at [Ancestry's] own customers" and I "can make [my] point concerning tree inaccuracies & cock-ups and their effect on our 'hints' system without being downright unpleasant and sarcastic about it."Allen says, “your cute little blog is a waste of bandwidth at best”Ann thinks I'm "...copying and pasting mistakes on trees and calling it a blog" and that my readers are "mean-spirited people...who like to have a laugh at the expense of others."Sue was really offended by the “...continual stream of sarcasm and constant poking fun...What a nasty taste in my mouth your blog left me with. Unpleasant, sarcastic and jeering at people who you obviously see as your intellectual inferiors. Won't be reading that again.”And finally from Les, "You truly are a horrible woman, pointing out mistakes is one thing but blatantly laughing and taking the p is completely out of order."

Why?

Researching our family histories we are bound to make mistakes. Hopefully we are quick to correct them. Unfortunately some people refuse to read or think before adding information to their family trees. Some trees have been abandoned so the errors are there for eternity. Here we will laugh, mock and shake our heads at the carelessness, stupidity and/or ignorance of those errors.All examples are taken from trees published online.I'll also post tips occasionally, though the messed up trees are a great example of what NOT to do. If you have an online tree to suggest for a future post please send me a link: buwtree(at)gmail(dot)com

The Fine Print

2. Content: Barking Up the Wrong Tree is responsible for the content of this site, not including visitor comments. Barking Up the Wrong Tree reflects the personal views and opinions of Loretta Gillespie.

3. Credit: Credit is not given to tree owners to protect the clueless. A tree owner who discovers their tree on this site should correct their mistakes so no one else realizes they were once a clickophile.

4. Accuracy and Validity: While there are helpful pointers on Barking Up the Wrong Tree a majority of posts are intended to be humorous. The disastrous trees are copied exactly as they appear on Ancestry.com. These trees are being used to show others what NOT to do.

5. Images: Attempts are made to source images used despite the fact that the trees they are taken from do not include source information.

6. Comments: Barking Up the Wrong Tree will exercise its right to delete comments which are deemed to be spam, offensive, childish or just plain stupid.

7. Liability: The content at Barking Up the Wrong Tree is not to be taken as fact nor absolute. Barking Up the Wrong Tree contains posts that are humorous and posts that are research tips. Barking Up the Wrong Tree is not responsible for anyone who cannot tell the difference between the two. The sites that Barking Up the Wrong Tree links to via hyperlinks are not under its control. Those sites are responsible for the content of those sites. If you do not find the humor on Barking Up the Wrong Tree to your taste then stop reading. If you choose instead to send an email to the owner it may be published on Barking Up the Wrong Tree and mocked publicly.

Who?

I'm a freelance musician in a large Midwestern city. Genealogy is my addiction. I am not a professional genealogist and everything I write should be taken with a grain of salt (preferably with a shot of tequila).